Phone Lanyard

My mobile phone is basically a GPS; I don´t use it as a phone. When I need it, I like to have it on a string so I don´t misplace it. But my small, slim (and cheap!) phone doesn´t have any place to attach a wrist strap or lanyard.

Photo of a phone showing front with a green screen
and the back of the phone rendered in a purple-ish black.

And neither does the case I put on it.

So I scoured the internet looking for some way to attach a string to this particular block of glass and plastic — and found a lot of dubious products nobody seemed to like.

Naturally, I made my own. I realized that I could slip a very thin piece of plastic between the back of my phone and the inside back of the case I´d put on it.

Photo of the inside of a mobile phone case.
At the bottom of the image a transparent piece of
plastic is barely visible. It covers about one-fifth of the
interior of the case. A black grosgrain ribbon is wrapped
around the center of the plastic template and the ribbon
is pulled through a slot at the bottom of the case.

So I raided the recycling bin for an old produce container, and cut a piece to match the inside of my phone´s case, next to the charging port. You can just barely make it out, above (it´s transparent!). I wrapped grosgrain ribbon around the plastic, and ran the ribbon out the opening for the charging port.

Photo of the inside of a black mobile phone case showing
a raised transparent plastic piece fitted to the end. A black
grosgrain ribbon is wrapped around the plastic and runs
through a slot in the bottom. Two rubber rings are attached
to the ribbon outside of the case, and a neon cord is wrapped
around the rubber rings. A black plastic cordlock is not quite
visible on the neon green cord at the bottom of the image.

Then I added two rubber rings (they´re plumbing grommets, very useful)  to the other end of the ribbon (two in case one fails — which, actually, has never happened), and ran a neon cord through the rubber rings. And added a cord lock to the string.

I stitched the ribbon loop firmly together, popped the phone into place, and that was it . . . my home-grown fix has been in place for a year now without any issues. And the best part? The ribbon folds out of the way for perfect access to the charging port!